


a dreamer amongst the stars

by wrnkledtime



Series: to the end of the world [12]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, More Cuddling, and kisses, bc i have an insatiable need, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 15:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6615802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrnkledtime/pseuds/wrnkledtime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you can't sleep when you're dead, but you can dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a dreamer amongst the stars

Emma’s body is warm next to his own and he marvels at it.

His eyes take in her figure, lithe and solid and _real,_ before his gaze drifts to her hand that rests lightly on his chest. She’s breathing in and out so softly, aggressive little huffs coming out every once in awhile that cause him to repress his own grin as his love for her tickles at his heart strings in response. Her nose twitches and she frowns, fisting his top with her fingers, and he immediately soothes away the wrinkles that mar her skin with his fingertips. She sighs, a soft and breathy little thing as a smile twitches at her lips, and he wonders what it’s like to sleep.

He hasn’t slept in what feels like eons - he’s a three hundred something year old man and he feels as if he’s aged another thousand years since arriving in the Underworld. _The perks of being dead,_ he muses to himself bitterly. He misses the feeling of waking up long after the sun has risen, an ache in his bones easily relieved by the satisfying stretch of his limbs. He misses waking up to warm sheets after he’d roll over and press his face into Emma’s pillow, breathing in her lingering scent and listening to the quiet sound of her humming as she would shower. He misses her coming back to bed, hair damp and fresh faced, before she’d cuddle against him, kissing him awake and swatting him away after he’d allow his lips to drift to the lukewarm skin of her neck. He misses _being alive_ and relieving his exhaustion with the simple pleasure of sleeping - he misses being able to dream without consequence and without fear.

Closing his eyes and allowing himself to rest is a chore and a half, and he refuses to allow the darkness the pleasure of scaring him through nightmares and bouts of self-loathing. So he remains awake, making sure that Emma sleeps as he notices the toll that being in the Underworld is beginning to have on her. He wishes that it wasn’t as difficult as it is, getting out of  this trap, and he wishes that -

“I can feel you thinking,” Emma grouses as she shifts in his arms. She pops one eye open to peek up at him with a pout. “S’late, babe.”

Killian suppresses a smile, inching forward to kiss her pout away, “How else am I supposed to pass the time?”

Emma hums contemplatively against his lips, snuggling further into his arms before pressing her nose against his chest and pursing her lips. “You’re so warm,” she informs him happily, flapping her arms out from between them to hug his side.

Killian grins into her hair as she noisily shifts around, purposefully intertwining their legs together. “Comfortable yet?”

“Hmm,” she murmurs, halting her movements after a moment. “Very.”

Killian runs his fingers through her hair, massaging at her scalp gently, and grinning at the noises of contentment that she makes. He thinks that she’s fallen asleep again as he feels her gentle breathing puff against his neck, but then she peers up at him through her dark lashes, her chin pressed against his chest.

He makes an inquiring noise as she leans up and nudges their noses together, a soft and sweet smile on her lips. Emma presses forward, kissing him once, twice, then three times, and he chases after her lips once she finally backs away. “I love you,” she says as she rests her forehead against his, using his shoulder as her pillow.

The place where his heart would be beating if he were alive aches. “I love you, too.”

“Tell me a story?” she requests, taking his hand in hers before intertwining their fingers together.

He brings their joint hands up to place kisses against her knuckles, “What kind of story?”

Emma grins, “One with a happy ending.”

Killian takes a moment to think as he brushes his lips over the skin of her hand, keeping his caresses light as a feather and gentle. “Once upon a time,” he begins and she lets out a snort of amusement, pulling away from him to watch him speak but keeping their bodies glued together. “There was a dreamer amongst the stars. Now this dreamer, he wasn’t like other dreamers, no - he had lived a thousand different lives before this one, and he had loved and lost and lived more times than he could keep track, and soon he forgot what it was like to dream.”

He peers down at Emma to find her looking back up at him with wide and fascinated eyes, and he had nearly forgotten how easy it was to entrance her with a story. He runs his hand through her hair, allowing his fingers to curl through the ends as he continues, “For hundreds and thousands of years this dreamer, who was given life after life for the sake of dreaming and believing and bettering the world, had forgotten what it was like to _really_ dream - what it was like to wake up feeling in awe and inspired, what it was like to imagine something so clearly and mix it up with reality because of how real it felt, what it was like to be swept off of your feet in a whole new world and land back home with your feet still on the ground - he had forgotten it all.”

“So what happened to him?” Emma asks, unable to resist the question from spilling out. Killian chuckles at her delirious eagerness as she blinks at him sleepily and he kisses her, relishing the feeling of her warmth as she languidly sucks at his top lip.

“Then,” he breathes out, pulling away from her and leaving a kiss against the dimple on her chin. “He met a star.”

“Oh,”

“This star showed him what it was like to dream again - she brought the dreamer back down from where he had floated off in the nebulous clouds and she anchored him, giving him a place to call home for the first time in a long time. And after what felt like thousands of years, the dreamer began to remember what it was like to dream again. He dreamed of the future - the galaxies that he and the star would come across, the cosmos that they would meet, the universes that they would call home time after time again. He dreamed of darkness and black holes, but she was always there to bring him back into the light. _She_ was light _-_ all bright and shining and irresistible - a force to be reckoned with. And then, when it was time for the universe to give the dreamer a new life, he refused. The dreamer, after living a thousand different lives and living enough dreams worth a thousand different centuries, had finally found his own dream. She was his new dream.”

“And were they happy?” Emma asks, her voice laced with sleep as her eyes drift shut. She presses herself against him, using his shoulder as a pillow.

He presses a kiss to her forehead, breathing her in as he he thinks of himself as the dreamer and she as the star. He smiles against her skin, “The happiest.”

The next time she asks him to tell her a story, they’re back in Storybrooke in their own bed, in their own house - the real version, _their_ version, with their legs intertwined and their bodies pressed together with no space lying in between.

“What kind of story?” he muses, recalling their last conversation.

Emma grins at him, “The one with the happy ending.”

Killian kisses her, long and slow, as his hand skims the curves of her body. “We’re living it, my love.”


End file.
